As a consequence of higher requirements in terms of safety and comfort, interfering effects acting on the wheel suspension must be compensated increasingly better and in increasingly shorter units of time. For example, the inclination of a vehicle wheel relative to the road surface also changes, for example, due to effects of lateral forces and the roll of the vehicle body. The king pin angle becoming established at the vehicle wheel leads to a change in the tire contact surface, so that the vehicle wheel loses valuable adhesion to the ground.
Double wishbone axles known so far compensate this tendency to the development of a king pin angle by specially affecting the wheel position by generating a negative king pin angle, which is directed in the opposite direction and which can be achieved, for example, by different lengths or orientations of the suspension arms during travel in a curve. However, this leads to drawbacks during the straight-line travel of the motor vehicle, namely, when individual vehicle wheels undergo an inward deflection on one side, as can happen, for example, when traveling over unevennesses of the road surface. Furthermore, an undesired wear of the tire develops in the case of such double wishbone wheel suspensions, and a valuable lateral force potential of the tire is lost.
EP 1 070 609 B1 describes a wheel suspension, which is designed as a double wishbone axle. The peculiarity of this solution is that a steering rocker, which establishes an articulated connection between the vehicle body-side ends of an upper control arm and of a lower control arm, so that the two ends of the control arms are arranged in a common steering rocker, is used as the compensating means. The opposite, wheel-side ends of these control arms are fastened to a wheel carrier each.
Another wheel suspension for a motor vehicle is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,929,271 B2. The wheel suspension described in this document has stabilizers as compensating means for correcting wheel positions, for example, the king pin angle of the wheel, and both a connection of two wheels located opposite each other, i.e., the wheels of the two sides of the vehicle, and a connection of front wheels with rear wheels are provided. Double-acting piston-and-cylinder units, which are integrated in the stabilizer of the motor vehicle and which bring about a compensation of undesired motions of the wheels, for example, during travel in a curve, can be used as compensating means in this solution. The wheel suspension known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,929,271 B2 has a suspension arm, which is coupled in an articulated manner with a wheel carrier carrying a vehicle wheel.
The common feature of these prior-art solutions is that the forces acting on the vehicle wheels and the undesired displacements of the vehicle wheels, which result from this, are compensated by coupling a plurality of vehicle wheels with one another, and compensating means suitable for this purpose are used.